As if Samsung didn’t have enough to worry about with their new neighbor to the North (Korea) declaring war, Samsung 28nm is still NOT yielding. In my previous blog “Can Samsung Deliver as Promised?” I wondered what will power the new Galaxy S4 phones that Samsung has been aggressively marketing. You would think it would be a 28nm version… Read More
Mentor at TSMC Technology Symposium
TSMC will host their annual technology symposium at several locations in the U.S. on April 9th in San Jose, April 16th in Austin, and April 23rd in Boston. TSMC will discuss the market outlook, design enablement, and technology for high-speed computing, mobile communications, connectivity and storage, CIS, embedded flash, … Read More
TSMC on Collaboration: JIT Ecosystem Development
Cliff Hou of TSMC gave the keynote today at SNUG on Collaborate to Innovate: a Foundry’s Perspective. Starting around 45nm the way that a foundry has to work with its ecosystem fundamentally changed. Up until then, each process generation was similar enough to the previous one, apart obviously from size, that it could be … Read More
Synopsys ♥ TSMC!
Dr. Paul McLellan and I will be covering the Silicon Valley SNUG live again this year. Unfortunately we are only allowed to see the keynotes (same thing with CDNLive) but they look very good:
Keynote Address: Massive Innovation and Collaboration into the “GigaScale” Age!
Aart de Geus, Chairman and co-CEO, Synopsys,… Read More
Qualcomm and Intel Dynasty Scenario at 14nm
At a different time, but certainly within the past 12 months, Paul Otellini was asked if Intel would be a Foundry for Qualcomm. His reply was that it did not leave a good taste in his mouth. Nevertheless it was not rejected and the door that remained open just a crack is likely to swing open for Qualcomm, the premier mobile silicon supplier… Read More
TSMC ♥ Cadence
In a shocking move TSMC now favors Cadence over Synopsys! Okay, not so shocking, especially after the Synopsys acquisitions of Magma, Ciranova, SpringSoft, and the resulting product consolidations. Not shocking to me at all since my day job is Strategic Foundry Relationships for emerging EDA, IP, and fabless companies.
Rick… Read More
Using Soft IP and Not Getting Burned
The most exciting EDA + Semi IP company that I ever worked at was Silicon Compilers in the 1980’s because it allowed you to start with a concept then implement to physical layout using a library of parameterized IP, the big problem was verifying that all of the IP combinations were in fact correct. Speed forward to today and our… Read More
Wall Street Does NOT Know Semiconductors!
In my never ending quest to promote the fabless semiconductor ecosystem I cannot pass up a discouraging word about one of the oldest financial services companies. You can consult with me for $300 per hour to answer your questions about the semiconductor industry on the phone or you can buy me lunch and get it in person (lunch will probably… Read More
Mentor @ the TSMC Open Innovation Platform Forum
At TSMC’s Open Innovation Platform (OIP) Ecosystem Forum, Mentor made technical presentations on four different topics, two of them co-presented with TSMC and LSI Corporation. Those presentations are described below with links to downloadable pdf presentation files.
Finding and Fixing Double Patterning Errors in… Read More
TSMC Apple Rumors Debunked!
Disclaimer: I’m a blogger and by definition I share my observations, opinions, and experiences. Journalists and Analysts on the other hand are held to a much higher legal standard which is why they cite undisclosed sources and use double speak to shield themselves legally. Why trust a SemiWiki blogger over a Journalist or an Analyst?… Read More

